FROM NIJOLĖ SADUNAITĖ'S TRIP TO THE LABOR CAMP

On June 20, 1975, immediately following her trial, Nijolė's brother took warm clothing to his sister, but Warden Petrauskas, of the Vilnius KGB isolation prison refused to accept them. That same evening, Nijolė Sadūnaitė was taken away to Mordovia.

(Miss) Sadūnaitė was kept seven days in a Pskov prison cell. The cell where she spent an entire week is in the basement, damp, cold, filthy and airless. A filthy pallet was thrown down, she was not given a pillow, sheet or blanket. Nijolė caught a cold in this icy and damp cellar. When she asked the cell guard for cough medicine, the latter angrily replied, "Well, cough yourself back to health!" After this reply, Nijolė Sadūnaitė no longer asked for any medical help, although she needed it badly.

In Yaroslavl, Nijolė was kept one and a half days in a cell with a female criminal.

In Gorki, Nijolė was kept seven days in a semi-basement cell with female criminals.

(Miss) Sadūlnaitė was kept one night in the Ruzayevk prison.

In Potma, she was kept five days in a cell with female criminals. She slept every night on the floor. The cell was infested with bedbugs as unmerciful as the guards themselves. Nijolė spent two days in Potma in an isolation cell.

The trip from Vilnius to Mordovia took from June 20 to July 18. On the trains, Nijolė was transported mostly with criminals, enclosed in metal cages. The food provided was bread, very salty fish and water. Nijolė did not take any bread or fish and only drank the water.

At the Pskov, Yeroslavl, Gorki, Ruzayevsk and Potma prisons Nijolė ate the very meager prison food which was provided.

In the fall of 1975, four security agents from Vilnius came to the Mordovian prison camp. They questioned Miss Sadūnaitė about whether she had given anyone her speech and final trial state­ment from the Vilnius security police isolation facility, during the trip to Mordovia or from the Mordovian prison camp. (Miss) Sadūnaitė replied: "Are you still not convinced that, if I did not answer your questions during nine and a half months of preliminary interrogations at the Vilnius KGB isolation facility, I will not answer them now?"

The security agents explained that they were not asking to whom (Miss) Sadūnaitė gave her speech, but merely from where she gave it. Nijole did not answer this question either. When they saw they were not accomplishing anything, the security agents claimed that they had just dropped in to see her since they were there on other business. After inquiring after her frame of mind, whether she was bored, and how she liked the colony, they left.

During her entire prison term, (Miss) Sadūnaitė did not receive a single letter from the U.S., although relatives and other people wrote her from there. Nor did she receive any letters from England or other countries. Nijolė does not receive all of her letters from Lithua­nia, either.

From Norway, Nijolė was sent food (chocolate) which she was not given. She learned of this package only after eight rubles were deducted from her meager prisoner's pay for this package. Three months later, camp authorities gave this package to (Miss) Sa-dūnaitė's brother.

In July 1975, the Ukrainian poet Vasily Stus was brutally beaten at the Mordovian camp. When she learned of this, Nijolė and four other political prisoner women went on a hunger strike August 1-5 to protest the arbitrariness and cruelty of camp authorities.